Tuesday, 26 April 2011

And the sea isn't green
And I love the queen
And what exactly is a dream
And what exactly is a joke.

Lyrics by that crazy diamond Syd Barrett from Jugband Blues on Pink Floyds album A Saucerful of Secrets made in 1968.

What exactly is a joke? The Royal Family are a dictatorial family who for generations have maintained power and control over huge rafts of wealth, land and people. In order to maintain their position against incredible odds they have plotted and connived and constructed a public image to maintain their wealth and influence. They are not a nice bunch of dear little English folk. In fact their lineage is primarily German. But are we really fooled by these people? I think so.

Alex Jones has a nice little potted history and a view on the Royal Wedding.

Personally I don't give a damn. I am fed up with the disgusting attitude of the rich over the poor and worse still the poor's applauding and respect for their rich rulers. That is the bankers, politicians and, hey, the Royal Family. I really think it is disgusting that the likes of the Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa the Crown Prince of Bahrain are invited to this elitist gathering whilst he is indulging in the murder of protestors and abduction of doctors. However he has declined the invitation claiming he didn't want to tarnish the celebrations whilst there was unrest in Bahrain. How very astute and considerate of him. I'm sure Prince William understands that Salman has more interesting games to be playing this weekend.

It is disgusting that Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz has been invited and is expected to attend along with the likes of Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Kingdom and Mswati III king of Swaziland. All of these people have been accused of human-rights abuses and with good reason.

But steady on the world is a tough place. Ruling people is not an easy task and sometimes firm measures are required. Well even if it were necessary, and I don't believe it is, I certainly can't be expected to agree with them. And anyway the evidence doesn't suggest that their constructed image is correct anyway. They have all the money and they don't exactly help other people. Those are the facts. The help they do give, like the Prince's Trust, is a little unconvincing when you look at the financial details. It is just publicity. Hey! I'd be willing to help people with other people's money if I were that rich and interested in keeping my dosh.

But you've got to feel sorry for them because they may feel they have no choice. But then I feel I have no choice but to be penniless and homeless. If the wealth of the country were spread a little more evenly we could all be happy but some people are just too desperate to have so much more. I have been alive for a few years and after a few more I will be gone. But whilst I am here I notice that I am disgusted at the way a few people treat the majority. That's about it really - disgusted.

I have nothing against them personally but as figureheads in a role they are primarily human and they should treat that role in the way that they profess everyone should act according to their God. I mean God for heaven's sake. Nothing trumps that. God is the meaning of life. God supersedes this temporal existence so if for one fraction of a second they meant what they profess they simply could not act the way they do. It is a con. Really. It's a con. But...

Just got passed this link. It seems like an obscure news article about some place somewhere in some state in America with some bureaucratic troubles. But hang on... this sort of thing is going on all over the place. You don't believe democracy is dead yet? When you wake up you will find it is a fait accompli. Too late to do anything about it then.

It is simply dictatorship insidiously creeping in through any nook or cranny. This small news clip on the Rachel Maddow Show could almost go unnoticed except that hopefully you will pass it on to someone else and eventually they will not get away with it. Briefly it is about the Katherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit Michigan being closed under the new enhanced Michigan Financial Martial Law Bill. As Robert C Bobb the Detroit public schools emergency financial manager said "... I do drool when I think of the pace of change we could achieve under the new law." Frightening or what?

Monday, 25 April 2011

Please contact me if you know of any groups or forums who deal with issues relating to the Children Services in the UK. You can leave a comment on this blog or contact me via email.

I have a problem with the Children Services. Basically they have been pursuing us just because we are a convenient target. If I thought for one moment that they wanted to actually help us I would put up with a lot of crap. But it is clear that their focus of attention is on finding things wrong that they can blame me (the parent) for so that they can enact some kind of action which benefits them because it is keeping them in work and does nothing or worse for my daughter. As someone once put it to me "They are keeping their job not doing their job."

I am not of the opinion that the Children Services is a wholly bad thing. I think that it is possible they do a lot of good work. I will say that I have little experience of that side of their activities. But I am of the opinion that a lot of what they do is not good. I guess it is rather like the army. You might think that it is a good thing to have an army to defend you from bad people. But when the society dictates that you think certain things and you can't say other things and they start to enforce their control with the army it becomes clear that the army is acting in a bad way.

To keep things in perspective I want to make the point that a person or an organisation might do a lot of good things but when they do something bad that is bad. I too often come across the argument that something bad is forgivable because things would be worse otherwise. I call this the Uncle Adolf Syndrome. I have fallen for this argument too often in my life. It is not acceptable. Bad stuff is bad stuff and it needs to be addressed. So if someone's intention is good then they will be responsible enough to acknowledge what they do wrong and try to address it to make things better in the future. Failing that one is left with the view that things would be worse if the bad stuff wasn't happening which is patently wrong. If the intention is good then the intention is to make things better not to maintain a status quo which is engaged in bad stuff.

So... The Children Services, when they do bad stuff, should recognise it and do something about it. But, so far, in my experience, they don't. What they do do is to try to defend themselves by distraction, avoidance and blame. It is understandable because we live in a blame culture. The idea being that if, for example, the Children Services can be seen to be doing something seriously wrong then "heads must roll" is the response. We don't seem to be able to get past the vindictive, punitive attitude. Actually if something is wrong then recognising it, accepting that people are not perfect and taking action to put things right is all that is needed. But that is not how our culture works. Rather it indulges in a mechanism of cascading oppression.

There is a long history to my difficulties with the Children Services but I will just mention the latest round of rubbish and abuse. It all started when my daughter was rushed into hospital. I am a single parent and she is my only child. I am male and she is female. The NHS acted appallingly. From the general service which was shoddy and third world in nature, to the behaviour of some of the nurses which was cruel, the whole affair was terrifying for my daughter. But the nurses (and one in particular) took an arrogant, prejudicial and authoritative stance and reported us to the Children Services. Maybe I will expand on the appalling experience in the hospital some other time but this is where the involvement with the Children Services started. There were allegations from the nurse of inappropriate touching, my daughter undressing in front of me and my lying on her bed. All of which were actually factually wrong. I am my daughters only parent and she was placed on an adult female ward and the officious ward sister didn't like me, a male, being there. She interpreted my kissing my daughter on the forehead before leaving as "inappropriate touching". She referred to my daughter lifting her t-shirt for the doctor to look at her tummy as "undressed in front of him" and the bit about lying on her bed was simply a fiction (not that there would have been anything wrong with it if I had).

So I understood the Children Services concerns when they rushed in the next day. I accepted that they wanted to interview us both. They interviewed us for about one and a half hours each. Even this I accepted as understandable. I even tolerated their insinuations, allusions and pseudo-psychoanalysis and explained that they were not correct. Then they produced what they call an "Initial Assessment". It was shocking. It did shock my daughter and not only did it cause her to cry a lot but it destabilised her and has caused her to stop going to college to try to catch up with her education which has been devastated by the education system and their unbelievable bullying.

At this stage I was unhappy with their approach and said that I had some serious concerns. They suggested I put them in writing so that we could discuss them. I did. To date they have entirely ignored that letter. Their conclusion in their Initial Assessment was that my daughter was a child in need as defined by the Children Act 1989 and concluded that her vulnerability was such that she was "unlikely to reach or maintain a satisfactory level of health or development without the provision of services". They decided that the action to be taken was to do a Core Report. I don't disagree with this conclusion and wouldn't disagree with the chosen action if it were benign. But they embarked on their "investigation" with prejudice. They had failed to complete the Initial Assessment in the designated time. They then explained the procedure for the Core Assessment which would consist of a sequence of meetings. They failed to attend meetings making up lies about not being able to find the bell (This is not an assumption by me, it has transpired that either that was a lie or some other fact they asserted was a lie, so one way or another they have lied to us). They did not complete the meetings as planned. When I objected to their changing meetings to avoid talking to me and to duplicate meetings with my daughter they reluctantly agreed they could have the meeting they specified with me and then simply didn't turn up.

At this point I complained in writing to the manager. The list of errors was immense and I suspect to any observer these complaints would be self evidently correct and reasonable. I think they were troubled by this letter because I never heard a dickybird out of them for three months. So I wrote to them expressing my concern at their lack of response to my letter. It took them some time but they wrote back acknowledging one minor prejudice that wasn't even theirs (namely that the nurse had prejudicially stated that the child was "into witchcraft") and totally dismissed everything else. It was a token letter so that they couldn't be accused again of not responding. So I wrote to them again pointing out that they had a legal responsibility to complete the Core Report and either they had not done that or they had completed it without the designated meetings in which case it was invalid and they were keeping it in secret on their Integrated Computer Service (ICS) for all and sundry to look at. They responded by sending me a copy of the faked Core Report. It is faked because it has wrong dates, wrong information, and has clearly been completed since they received my complaint three months after they state it was completed. And to add to their errors they sent it to me in their haste to cover their proverbial behind. They specifically gave the Initial Assessment to my daughter explaining that it was confidential and it was hers and I could not read it unless she specifically gave me permission. Well that idea of confidentiality flew out the window pretty easily when they were afraid of what I had stated they had done.

Now some people might think that if I had shut them up in the first place that I had a achieved my pragmatic objective of stopping their assault on us and I might leave it at that. But I have a bigger problem. We are very nearly destitute. There is a massive debt, no house, no pension, no earned income and my health is in a seriously bad way. My daughter's life has been devastated. She effectively stopped education after 2 years at secondary school and has spent the last three years in bed in an attic. That's it! I cannot easily explain here how bad things are but in the next year if things don't change significantly I cannot imagine how bad they will be. Seven years ago my wife and my daughter and myself lived in a nice cottage and we were solvent. For whatever reason my ex-wife decided to embark on a massive assault. She constructed a bizarre scenario of me being an aggressive, alcoholic, sexual and violent abuser. I suspect this has more to do with her childhood than the current reality but that is another issue. What happened was that the courts were involved, the Social Services were involved, the Police Child Protection unit were involved, CAFCASS were involved, and the whole thing became a complete nightmare. I hope to explain it all some other time but the effects on my daughter and me have been dreadful. Now each and every single detrimental event could easily have been survived had all other things been equal. And this is my point; It is the accumulation of bad stuff that in the end becomes overwhelming and does irreparable and significant damage. So exactly when should one object? For example my ex lies to the police about me, says I have hit her and bashes her own nose to cause it to bleed to convince the police. They arrest me and treat me badly and on investigating they realise there is no case to answer and they unceremoniously dump me on the streets eight miles from home in the middle of the night with no suitable clothes or money. I got a taxi to take me on the promise of paying him when I got home. So how do I deal with that? How do I get, the expenses, a day's pay, and compensation for the distress? How can the balance be corrected? The fact is that one simply has to put up with it. The number of problems and the distress and the damage over the course of several years was relentless and not survivable. The CAFCASS investigation put us under a lot of strain and although they concluded the daughter should live with me we still suffered because of the accusations and the threats. The Social Services were "very pleased to report that there was definitely nothing wrong" but when I pointed out what was going on and that they had concluded there was nothing wrong with me or my daughter but there was something evidently wrong with the mother because all this trouble was evidence of it they simply omitted that consideration from the report. The solicitor dealing with the family issues was exceptionally good and we won a case that no solicitor expected us to win but the solicitor looking after the financial matters was a disgrace to the legal profession. The barrister that took home well over a thousand pounds for half a day's work advised me incorrectly and the final settlement was simply not survivable. Due to unbelievable prejudice in our culture the parent and child were thrown out of the house whilst the very rich parent was left with almost everything (including my pension). If I were female I believe things would have been very different and my daughter's life would not have been devastated.

The story is so rich in our societies crap I will have to write it up elsewhere but for here the point is that I have had enough. I cannot continue to expend energy defending myself from other people's assaults. It is not enough that they have stopped hurting us and get away scot-free whilst we sit here licking our wounds with the situation having got tangibly worse again. And for their part they have benefited at our expense because they are filling their designated hours with "justified" work. So they get a house and a pension and holidays whilst we don't. All because they came and did us unacceptable harm.

The Children Services are paid to prevent abuse and to help make things better for those who are abused or deprived. It is the Children Services who have abused us and caused us harm. Now I hold them responsible and I want compensation. Admittedly the effects may not have been so bad had their actions been the only assault on us. But that is no excuse. If you hit someone with a brick and they die you are held responsible for murder. It is no argument to say that they might not have died if they had been stronger.

The Children Services are guilty of abuse and if anyone knows of any support groups or organisations I could contact I would love to know. I need help and I want help and I will get satisfaction from this one way or another. You could always send lots of money but just a web address, a contact or a little money would do.

Saturday, 23 April 2011

The UK authorities have practiced instigating riots in a small middle class British town in preparation for things to come.

It might sound a little harsh to accuse the police of instigating the riots in Bristol on Thursday 21 April 2011. It would seem to be a conspiracy theory worthy of the broader reputation of such theories. But I have been predicting riots in Britain for a few years now. And I predict that this is just the initial rumblings of things to come.

Sometimes people do things that they don't even know they are doing. One thing that strikes me about conspiracy theories is that sometimes the theories are discredited because attributing such devious and complicated conscious motives to individuals seem unbelievable. The same theories are discredited and so the official explanation is accepted by default. But people do things more intuitively than consciously. The rationalisation more often than not comes as an explanation for the action. See Conspiracy Coincidences for an example of this dynamic.

It seems there was a Tesco store which residence were not pleased with. An understandable sentiment perhaps. And it seems there were some squatters in a building opposite the store. The police got reports that the squatters had petrol bombs and were possibly planning to burn the building down. Now why would you need a large force of riot police to deal with that? You wouldn't. But the police did have significant force hiding around the corner from the squatters residence. Okay, so they send a few police officers into the squat and arrest four people and leave. But for some strange reason several hundred residence appeared on the streets and apparently began building barricades and setting fire to rubbish bins. This is all beginning to sound a little implausible as it stands. Bath is a nice middle class English town. The police force came out of hiding and it really doesn't matter who (metaphorically) fired the first shot the fact is that there were confrontations resulting in many injuries. It seems on first reports that most of the injuries were to the police. You could almost feel sorry for the police.

What is also very interesting is that many of the local residence interviewed expressed the view that it was fun and exciting. Overall it seems that the incident was a small insignificant event in the larger picture or British or world history. But why were the police so well prepared and why did the local people feel that this was a fun event? Most people are not happy at the prospects of riots in their neighbourhood. The answer lies in the state of world politics.

We live in a hierarchy of oppression. The unrest, protests, riots and revolutions currently filling our television screens and internet browsers are basically people-power objecting to the extremities of oppression. They have nothing left to lose. And the Western World is keeping its populations appeased by responding in the only acceptable way to maintain the illusions of reasonableness and democracy and are condemning the oppressive dictators. The Western powers will soon be hoist on their own petard. It is the Western powers that have utilised, even installed, the hierarchical oppressive regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. It is part of the pyramid of oppression. But the pyramid economy which facilitates the oppression goes deep into the structure of the Western World. Not only is the Western World's financial structure on the brink of collapse due to the excessive abuse of the banks but now the resultant economic tsunami is just beginning to crash across Europe and America from the shattering earthquake of revolution in the Middle East. As the Middle East is destabilised the price of fuel rises. I am a little amazed at how the politicians are acting almost surprised at the scale of the effect this is having on food prices and just about every other consumer product. It is like the naivety they exhibit over the power of the internet.

The politicians across Europe and America have been continuing the paradigm of oppressing the poor to keep them in line and rewarding the rich as if they are the ones who can save our society. But this is simply the crimes escalating. There is neither any moral excuse to make poor people poorer in an attempt to "save money" by claiming the need for "austerity measures" nor is there any rational pragmatic case to take more from the poor to make the rich richer. It is immoral and irrational but then when has history ever demonstrated otherwise. Compulsive human behaviour predictably gets stronger as time goes on. The idea being it has worked so far so if we simply turn up the volume it will work some more. But there is one inevitable end to that sequence. The situation will fail.

All across the Western world the populations are becoming more aware of the criminal activities of the banks. They are more aware of the deceptive behaviour of politicians. They are becoming poorer to the point that they are losing basic necessities let alone a reduction in living standards. They are close to having virtually nothing to lose and the hierarchy of power is going to be confronted by the question of how to maintain the pressure when the trouble starts. If it is so unacceptable to use bullets against a population in the Middle East the populations of Europe and America will feel confident and empowered in the same way they have seen the people of the Middle East confront their regimes. People in Britain are very close to not accepting the poverty imposed on them by the rich. And the rich/poor divide is widening fast. The illusion presented by the hierarchy is dissolving fast. More and more people are out of work. More and more young people can see no reasonable future. And it only takes a Tesco store in the wrong place to provoke a mini riot.

The police know that they do not have the resources to deal with the kind of riots that occurred in Britain several decades ago. And they would be simply overwhelmed if the intensity of protests were significantly higher. With the advent of the internet and the examples of its usefulness in the Middle East even the dumb British Bobby can see that the potential for disaster in this country is rising fast. And so can the people. The police were afraid that this situation could escalate. They were primed for it and so they were prepared for it. Their very preparation will have been stimulating to the residence and it doesn't take much on the internet to spread the news live as it happens. The police, I believe, inadvertently turned an ordinary crime prevention activity into a riot.

So if I suggest that the police instigated this riot as a test case for things to come you might now see what I mean. It is not entirely conscious. They didn't sit and plan it. But they know the delicate state of affairs and were over armed because of their fear and sure enough as soon as there was any signs of trouble they wanted to quell it fast and so used inappropriate force which caused a backlash to justify their preparedness. It's basically because we all know what is coming.

Part of the explanation given for shoring up the bankers with billions of pounds was that if their bonuses and profits were curtailed they would simply move abroad and we would lose all that expertise. But surprisingly they didn't use the money to help oil the economy (as was the condition of the money) but rather they pocketed it and asked for more. When the coffers are dry they will leave anyway. The authorities might be afraid of that but I think it would be a jolly good thing and the sooner the better. Appeasement has never worked and it won't work now. And the people of Britain (and Europe and America) are being primed for revolt. Within a year or five the whole landscape of Europe and the US will have changed dramatically. There is no amount of fudging that will stop climate change, lower world population, increase food production and generally allow the current ways of carrying on to continue. Any fix is only a temporary patch. This abusive mechanism is doomed. My best hope is that humanity can find a fundamentally different paradigm for survival.

So the mini riot in Bristol was provoked by the police (bless them) in preparation for things to come.

"Mark my words!" says Sam as he waves a twiggy finger knowingly in the winds of change.

Friday, 22 April 2011

To start with it can be asserted that there is a lot wrong with it. Am I Islamophobic? No! A phobia is an irrational fear and my objections to Islam are rational. However, my particular angle in this article is not focused on any specifically Islamic issue so much as the Abrahamic religions and their general ethos.

The three main branches of Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All of them profess to be universal and benign. Reality evidences that they are neither of those things. Not that they are based in reality in the first place. I was brought up as a Christian and my scant research into Judaism and Islam indicate that my objections to Christianity are equally pertinent when it comes to the other two; Hypocrisy.

It is a paradox that Christianity advocates freedom. There is little doubt that all three religions are committed to freedom. My personal experience is that Christianity has enabled and empowered me to believe in myself. I am one of God's children and when other people want to silence or control me it is clear that God loves me and I have a God given right to be me. Of course I have a corresponding duty to be true to myself. So I am encouraged to speak the truth and to stand up for what I know to be true. Part of the announced message of Jesus is that we are all free whatever other people say. And Christianity supports that premise. That is what the whole crucifixion affair was about.

Then there is love. I can't speak for Judaism or Islam but Christianity places love as probably the next highest thing to God. And God is love. Mr Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in his philosophical ramblings equates love with truth and I would agree. It is a little complex and I won't explain it here but it is to do with harmonising with real reality. Love is harmonizing with reality, given that reality is God.

The trouble is that humans seem rarely able to contain the whole circle of rationalisation that reveals the truth of love. So love becomes a concept and God becomes metaphorical and reality becomes temporal. It doesn't take long for the 'love' that most Christians 'believe' in to become an ethereal thing. Not of this earth, this reality, but something 'spiritual' and other worldly. Then they spend their time alive wallowing in a fictional notion of an ideal of love that they have conjured up in their heads. There is no surprise then that their map of reality clashes with their experience of reality quite often.

Then, when, say, a child kicks them and expresses anger, they are offended and declare that that is not love. And, in order to do God's work they set about teaching that child how they should act. At this point they have gone off the rails. This is the point at which the crack that was caused in the fabric of spacetime by their inability to believe what they originally knew was right, namely that reality and God and love are the same thing, begins to cascade and reveal itself in a rupture to the harmony that is, a priori, reality.

Humans are very complex and rarely are mistakes easily accommodated in their brains. Humans have a huge capacity to be convoluted and to lose themselves up their own proverbial behinds. So the moralising to children becomes a mission that they believe to be God's work. By the 21st century in Western culture Christians had begun to realise the obvious contradiction of beating goodness into Children and they had developed a more subtle and apparently more acceptable way of doing it; Patronization.

By acting out the role of the benign facilitator of life (remember it is inherent in human existence that children are dependent on adults) they moralise children in order to implant the belief that they are not acceptable to the benign powers if they do not agree with the moral constructs. The best example I saw of this was a priest talking to his congregation, and specifically the children, about Jesus and how Jesus was so kind and that is how we should be. The thunderbolt hit me. Of course it all seems reasonable and nice and cuddly but hiding beneath the surface is the hidden message that the children would not be acceptable to this culture if they didn't agree.

It may be true that being kind is a good way to be but being free to find that out for yourself is more important than being forced to conform to someone else's construct of kindness. It was clear that the priest was not loving and nurturing and respecting the children but rather trying to coerce them to conform. Behind him was the symbol of the threat. I heard him say, metaphorically, we will crucify you if you don't agree with us. I know this sounds harsh and even unreasonable to many who start by conforming to Christian views but I am a great believer in real rationalisation. That is, that we discover the truth by rational thought. When two things seem contradictory the path to a deeper understanding is to examine the contradictions and to find an explanation that incorporates what previously seemed incompatible. Example is the best way to teach and a kind priest who does not offer insidious and veiled threats to children is a better way. There is a fundamental difference between telling someone that you respect another person's attitude and telling children that to be 'good' they too must respect that person's attitude. There lies the subtle crack in the universe.

Way down the line it is easier to see the overt contradictions in the crusades, the inquisition, the acts of brutality carried out in the name of Jesus or Muhammad, and iconic acts like the World Trade Center disaster and the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. Most people can see the paradox of these apparently peace loving religions which result in these heinous crimes against humanity. The problem seems to be the need to sum up one's belief in goodness in a concept or framework. Once you do that you are lost. As far as I know from all my reading around the subject the guy that we remember as Jesus was precisely not into organised religion. The one he belonged to and that he never left he expressly condemned for its practises in the real world. The ideas are fine but the hierarchy, the judgmental attitudes, the indoctrination, the exclusive nature, the elitism were all criticised.

Islam claims to be a religion of peace but the threats that emanate to people who don't conform are simply the evidence of the contradictory nature of the religion. All religions of peace and freedom must accept the freedom of other people and, in fact, by their own dictate, love them. I think the invention of a God figure that must be worshiped is a fallacy that will always end in tears. One of the most frightening things for me is to see the millions of people around the world who profess a belief in these Abrahamic religions bowing down and paying homage to a fictional notion of an all powerful, human like, invention. It seems to be the apex of worshipping the oppressor so that you don't get hurt; So that you are loved and looked after. Christ's message seems to be that there is no legitimate hierarchy on this earth, that there is no person who should be worshipped and blindly obeyed. The message is one of self belief and respect. It could be no other way. Christ realised that he was the only one and I suspect Muhammad did too. The Christian message is clear and it is that each and every one of us is God. As are the birds and the trees. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, dictates to others and viciously attempts to intimidate others to agree with it. They are all unholy, undesirable, unpleasant and there is little evidence that these massive dictatorial memes are acceptable to the good people of planet Earth. Religion should be made illegal.

All these religions quite evidently manifest the worst fears of their followers. These religions turn this reality into their version of hell. All the people who conform to these mechanisms of oppression for their own personal benefit are the inhabitants of hell itself. The higher up the hierarchy the deeper they are in hell. They talk about the day of judgement but little do they realise, by their own admission, they are going to be judged and feigned ignorance will be no excuse.

Friday, 15 April 2011

Yet Another person has been arrested over the Anonymous attacks on Amazon, Mastercard and Visa. The Telegraph reports, in an article entitled New arrest over Anonymous' pro-WikiLeaks attacks, that a 22 year old human (I've removed the prejudicial gender) (though perhaps it shouldn't be huMAN either. Maybe huwoman! But then that would be the same but different. Um... Huperson, that'll do!) from Cleveland has been arrested in connection with the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the offending web sites. It seems ironic to me that the authorities are desperately searching for ways to prosecute and intimidate people who they feel have made any attempt to interfere with the legitimate use of the internet. But hang on a minute! Who is being prosecuted for disrupting WikiLeaks? Is the federal government of the United States being arrested and imprisoned for instigating a giant assault on WikiLeaks? No! Are Mastercard or Visa being inconvenienced for illegitimately preventing WikiLeaks doing legal business on the internet? No! Are Amazon being fined for illegitimately disrupting WikiLeaks' perfectly legitimate business activities? No! These companies are waging a kind of internet war all of their own. And I bet if one investigated the matter that WikiLeaks would be squeaky clean and the likes of the Bank of America and Amazon that they could be found to be breaking the law in many ways. I'm just voicing a suspicion you understand. It is a suspicion born of experience though.

Many years ago I wrote some software similar to the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (the software used for the DDoS) to bugger up people's web servers. I knew it wouldn't have a major effect whilst it was only me that was operating it. But at the time it seemed like a perfectly legitimate activity. I simply entered a URL and set the software running and it would repeatedly request the web page. And software can do that pretty fast! Why did I do this? Because I was getting too much SPAM! After a while of getting annoyed I realised that no one would do anything about this so I aimed to put a pointless load on the websites that benefitted from the SPAM. Well it kept me happy for a while. It strikes me that when organisations like Amazon and PayPal (yes they are another guilty party) abuse their high and mighty position to cow-tow to the all powerful governments and cause great hardship to other people that it may just be reasonable in a "democratic" sort of way for people to inundate their servers with requests.

Considering that one person running one piece of software will make virtually no difference to the offending web site it seems very democratic for everybody to have some of this software and they can effectively "vote" against a company by firing it at them. If only a few people were upset nothing much would happen but if thousands objected then the offending company would have to at least deal with the problem. It always seems so unfair to me that companies like the Bank of America or Amazon can take offensive action against someone and actually cause serious harm but if someone retaliates they will get arrested.

Its not that I think this sort of retaliatory action is simply a good thing in itself. I actually think it is a bad thing to interfere with other people's web sites. We have to be consistent here (unlike the US government). Internet freedom should be protected vigorously. But that is the point. Amazon and Visa and ... etc ... acted illegitimately and curtailed someone else's freedom. What they should have done was to have followed the law and if WikiLeaks were judged by a court of law to be acting illegally then they could quite legally withdraw their services. Simples! But No! Those cronky companies took the law into their own hands. I find that seriously objectionable. So when someone does the same kind of thing to them (but so miniscule compared with their offence) I applaud them for standing up against these megalomanic, self-important, arrogant, bigoted, control freak bullies.

Monday, 11 April 2011

I want a burqa (burkha, burka or burqua). I want to envelop my body in dark cloth. I want to feel the spiritual security of being immersed entirely and enclosed by the opaque linen. I want to feel safe from the predatory eyes of unscrupulous onlookers. I want to hide away and save the image of myself for a few chosen (for me) people.

But seriously when it comes to the new French law that comes into force today they are making a big mistake. A far better approach might have been to make a law which prohibits people from obscuring their identity in public under normal circumstance. This addresses the concerns about bank robbers and the like. Motorcyclists are often prohibited in the UK from buying petrol at a petrol station without removing their crash helmet. The idea being that they are effectively masked with it on. The new French law is specifically aimed at the oppressive nature of burqas but unfortunately it is inflammatory. It seems a lot of people think it is a religious issue but it is only religious insofar as some oppressive men fool their women into believing as much. If people want to wear burqas or niqabs it should be their right except where it infringes on other people's rights. One such infringement could be argued to be hiding one's identity in public. If the law stated that it was illegal to hide your identity in public under normal circumstances then they wouldn't have had to put all sorts of exceptions into the law such as carnivals and public theatre. The other part of the law to come into effect later this year which makes it illegal for a man to force a woman to wear a burqa is far more reasonable but then it is probably illegal for a man to force a woman to dress how he wants anyway. But that part of the law is at least overtly supporting womens freedom. The bit about fining the women for complying is a little like trying to fight drug abuse by targeting the victims instead of the perpetrators. It will never work.

Some people differentiate between idealists and pragmatists. I am definitely an idealist but that doesn't exclude me from being a pragmatist as well. The trouble with pragmatists is that they want to excuse shoddy thinking and botched jobs by virtue of the fact that they work. But look at Fukushima and Chernobyl as good examples of pragmatism. Those nuclear power stations worked... until the unexpected (but not unpredictable) events occurred. A little more effort to be a little more idealistic could have avoided both of those devastating disasters. Ideally, for example, humans would pursue sustainable and non polluting forms of energy production. Even if those solutions cost more in the first place, which is doubtful, there is no doubt that they would cost less in the long run.

But back to burqas. The problem with the French law is that it is political manoeuvring at the expense of rational and reasonable laws. It will most probably not have the effect that it states it is aimed at. It is aimed at reducing oppression but it has an oppressive nature all of its own. People will quite understandably object to such a prejudicial law. Prejudicial because it assumes it is oppression that forces people to wear burqas. The only way to stop behaviour which is caused by oppression is to stop the oppression. But that would take a more serious effort in the world of society and schooling. A culture that respects all people and shares the available wealth fairly would not have subcultures which oppose the system. But a culture that wants to have laws legitimising the accumulation of incredible wealth by a few at the expense of the majority of other people can never avoid the inevitable opposition from the masses of deprived people it produces.

This law is also odd because there has been a lot of effort and a special new law created to stop no more than about 2000 people in a population of about 60 million (that's 0.00003%) from wearing a piece of clothing that would most probably not be worn in a more successfully egalitarian society anyway. But where is all the effort to detect, prosecute and stop the banking fraternity from flaunting the law and ripping people off to the tune of billions of francs (oops, Euros I mean). I think this law is most probably silly and trying to "force" people to be free feels a little like the proverbial thin end of the wedge. It also seems a little like the pot calling the kettle black.

And anyway, outlawing freedom of expression is very dangerous and likely to cause more people to demonstrate that freedom. In conclusion I predict that the French will have to repeal the law before too long and that will have exactly the opposite effect of that which they said they wanted in the first place because it will give legitimacy to these monstrous oppressive misogynists who perpetrate the oppression under the guise of it being spiritually necessary.

Sunday, 10 April 2011

The Icelandic people have voted "NO" to repaying the €3.9 billion to Britain and Holland after the Icesave Bank crashed in October 2008. Why well done? Because money is a game with the rules written by the rich. It all seems fair to play musical chairs whilst you believe you have the advantage. It is ridiculous to suggest that some individuals can be paid massive salaries and huge bonuses for working at a job looking after other people's money and yet they are not held responsible for the massive losses and huge failures of their actions. It is bewilderingly stupid to expect the poor to be poor whilst the fat cats get richer and then when the fat cats fall foul of their own rules they simply steal the money from the poor people again pushing them deeper into poverty. They remain financially secure and happy on the backs of the population.

Is there any connection between this and the revolutions in the Middle East? Of course there is. The whole world is running a pyramid economy and the Arabs are somewhere near the bottom of the pile. The whole house of cards is coming down and people are beginning to refuse to accept the results of the rules which ultimately ensure that some people are very rich and the majority are nothing more than slaves to them.

The idea of suggesting that it is reasonable that you can borrow money because you are enticed and there is no other way to survive and then you can be charged interest at an unsustainable rate and eventually have to work more hours and more years and get less pension until you die would be laughable except for the fact that that is what it is all about. But it is far worse than that really. The people running the scams are doing it deliberately and they know that every time there is an avalanche they simply sidestep it and pass it down the line.

If I put my money in a bank and the bank goes bust my problem is with the company of men (cos it usually is men) who were running the bank and who lost my money. I don't want the bankers to live in their expensive houses and be working for another bank whilst the people in their country have to pay me with their money (that they haven't got). It is a ridiculous notion and if we continue along this path without making the bankers responsible for their actions there is only one inevitable end. Revolution in Iceland, revolution in Britain, revolution in Europe and in the USA (where the population is already armed!)

Part of what is driving this opposition to "austerity measures" around the world is the internet and the likes of WikiLeaks because it is becoming clear what nasty and tricky behaviour is going on in the higher echelons of power and money. It's all part of the evolution of the collective consciousness. Like in Tunisia and Egypt and Libya the people who are running the show will try their damndest to stifle the free flow of information in order to maintain the illusion to control the population for their own benefit. But like in those countries it cannot work. Once the proverbial cat is out of the bag there is no putting her back!

Britain and the United States are trying so hard even as I write to censor and control the internet. They will end up shooting people in the streets. Remember you heard it here first on Toxic Drums. What do you think they will do? Whilst they have your compliance of course they want to seem reasonable. Obama has recently repeatedly condemned imprisonment without trial and torture in the Middle East. Of course it all sounds great because it is appearing to echo the people's sentiments. What could he say? And yet Guantanamo is still operational, rendition is still seen as "expedient" and Bradley Manning is still being psychologically tortured without a trial. If their power base is threatened they will see their task (as they always do) as "helping" the poor stupid people by preventing them from shooting themselves in the feet by strong arm tactics "if necessary". In other words they will do everything they can to avoid revolt and that will lead to violent clashes.

We may well fear the revolutions in the Middle East over here in comfy Europe because if they manage to democratise they will not be so malleable and the Europeans will have to pay a fair price for oil (and chocolate). They will reasonably expect a piece of the old American Apple Pie and will take some of the wealth over to themselves. This will cost Europe and the USA. How are we going to manage? We are collapsing right now. There is talk of the recession being over. There are ideas about hard times with the assumption that they will be temporary. But they cannot be temporary under the current political and economic system. It is a one way ride and it has got to stop. It will stop either by sensible decisions now or it will simply crash and burn.

SENSIBLE DECISIONS NOW means that everybody stops supporting the oppressive and unfair "rules" whilst you still have the strength to do so. Everyone must stop being greedy. This doesn't mean that you middle class folk have to give up your second houses, your caravans, or your opulent lifestyle. This is not the usual lefty guilt trip issue. This means stop kidding yourself that the bosses will continue to look after you so long as you don't rock the boat. You are their lackeys, their saps, and they will murder you as soon as look at you if it is about their wealth. They are already stealing your pensions by reducing them and making you work more years. They will never give it back voluntarily. The thing is you have to start believing in the fairness and compassion that you treasure so much. You have to really believe it and make your voice heard when asked - like the Icelandic people! They fought for their political independence and freedom and now they are fighting for their economic independence and freedom.

It seems someone at the Fukushima plant must have been reading the Toxic Drums blog "Let's just chuck it in the sea!" because just after I suggested getting an oil tanker to store the radioactive seawater from the plant they have ordered a giant ship to do just that.

Well done nuclear experts at Fukushima!

It appears from an article in the Montreal Gazette titled "Japan calls on Russian expertise" dated 5 April that the Japanese ordered a floating containment vessel from the Russians to handle the radioactive seawater. The Russian vessel was apparently developed to help with the decommissioning of nuclear submarines in Russia. Five days later on 10 April the NZHerald reported that "Japan continues disposal of nuclear waste" and the article mentions the procurement of this Russian ship to help dispose of the liquid nuclear waste seawater.

There were reports that suggested the vessel might be the Lepse. The Lepse is a floating waste storage vessel which began life in 1934 when they started building it as an icebreaker. The Second World War interrupted its construction and work was restarted in the late 1950s when due to its strength as an ice breaker it seemed a good vessel for storing nuclear waste including nuclear waste liquids like seawater. It seemed unlikely this was the vessel because it is being used as a permanent storage device and is currently full of nuclear waste and moored on the outskirts of Murmansk.

More research revealed it is the Landysh. Landysh translates to Lily of the Valley in English and Suzuran in Japanese and is one of the world's largest liquid radioactive waste (LRW) treatment plants. It was built in 1998 after a report in 1993 revealed that the Russians were dumping radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan. The vessel is currently moored near to the port of Vladivostok and will soon be heading towards the beleaguered nuclear power station at Fukushima.

Thursday, 7 April 2011

Here we go again. Round and round we go. Subprime crash, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, credit crunch and Fukushima. We are not as clever as we seem to think we are. In fact we are probably less clever than monkeys. Our problems are possibly the consequence of not using our cleverness. That is, we are capable of being clever but instead we abuse the benefit and the consequences are worse than if we were never endowed with that attribute in the first place.

Rationality seems to be a real benefit. Logic, formalised by Aristotle, is a mechanism of reasoning which is reliable and informative. Logic allows us to realise more than we might know otherwise. It is a great tool in learning more about the world from the scant facts and observations that we can make as individuals. One of the beautiful characteristics of rational thought is that is always produces reliable and valid results. It is truly amazing but that is how it is. If you believe in God you might exclaim that God is wonderful because he has ensured consistency in his creation. The main consistency that is overtly evident to the human is in language. If it is stated that all swans are white then they are. It is really simple. If it is not white it is not a swan. It is as simple as that.

But of course you can't believe in God if you accept rationality because God is an invention... Read more...

Tuesday, 5 April 2011

There is something so irresponsible, irrational and irritating about the way TEPCO are dealing with this crisis at the Fuckashemale plant . Anyone would think they were children playing. In the case of children they experiment at a level which is safe. In the case of TEPCO they are not just a big company and as such their behaviour effects lots of people but they are dealing with a world scale problem.

First of all the nuclear power stations should never have been built the way they were. But the way our economic system works with all the irrationality and the greed motive it is not surprising that the human sense applied to safety regulations only just manages to make them relatively safe. Nuclear power stations can be built to really safe standards. The two main ingredients which are missing are ingenuity and money. They say nuclear power is economic but they don't factor in the disposal of the waste but that's another story. Given the reality of the way our economic system works there is now another major problem with dealing with an accident. The human element. We educate ingenuity out of our populations. We have this strange way of setting standards which children have to achieve as if there is something wrong with them if they fail. We intimidate them, we threaten them, we set them against each other (all designed into the Calvinistic indoctrination model) and we praise and reward them when their results match the official ones. Then we give the most important jobs to the best conformists. That is the people who have the least ability to think creatively. So we give them jobs in nuclear power stations and when something goes wrong they are very good at "doing the right thing" so that they couldn't possibly be blamed. So they will do what the manual tells them. But the manual did not anticipate this sequence of events that have led to an unexpected crisis.

What they should have done was to order new batteries straight away. Then they should have ordered new generators. Heck if this was a pop concert I am sure they would have got mobile generators in place very quickly. But the people at the plant could not stand back and see what the bigger picture was because they are so well trained to do the predictable. When the plants started blowing up it was unbelievable that they started pouring sea water into the system. But to follow this with concrete followed by papier-mâché and then to use bath salts to try to see where the leak was is all too much to be believed. Like the moon landings I am beginning to wonder if this is just part of the fake construct manufactured by some secret organisation to keep the population entertained and then to justify more austere actions later. But the saga continues. Then they suggest wrapping the plant in a giant cloth bag! This is art. This is not science. I like art but not with dangerous nuclear material. Given that it was inevitable that they would have to do something with all the irradiated sea water they poured into the plants they are now talking about the need to get rid of it as if it is an unexpected event. As if it has nothing to do with them. And they are coming up with such a stupid and uncreative idea. They want to pour the water into the sea. This is not acceptable. Of course just once, if it were the only problem, and we were being generally responsible and sustainable in our behaviour otherwise, an action like this may be justified. But we are destroying this planet piece by piece and this philosophy of treating the world as if we can't do any real harm is irresponsible and unacceptable. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill problem would not be so desperate if it were the only case. There are thousands and thousands of cases of unacceptable pollution occurring at an increasing rate on this planet. For more than 50 years the population has been clearly aware that this kind of thing is not sustainable so why do we allow the power mongers to continue with their selfish corruption.

Here's a simple solution for the folk at Fukushima: Put the water in an oil tanker. Now you can set a team on solving the problem of filtering the water and safely storing the radioactive waste. Simples! But no! They have to panic and pour it into the sea. If this were the only issue it would possibly be acceptable but watch this space: It will not be the only case.

Monday, 4 April 2011

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got, and home did trot,
As fast as he could caper,
To old Dame Dob, who patched his nob
With vinegar and brown paper.

I am no nuclear power expert but the fiasco going on at the Fukushima power plant is becoming a joke. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) seems to be very amateur in its attempts to manage the catastrophe. It is no good excusing them as if they were ordinary people with a big problem. Building nuclear power stations is not only a serious matter but it carries serious responsibilities too. If companies can build such things for profit for themselves such that if anything goes wrong they just apologise and live somewhere else with all the profit that is not acceptable. The first thing they should have done when the tsunami flooded the generators is to have realised they only had 8 hours of battery life left and treated it as a serious national danger. They should have got the army involved and they should have had new batteries, new generators and anything else they might have needed ordered and on their way. But no! There was no move to get emergency help in. One explosion and they said it was only a hydrogen bomb. Another explosion and they said it didn't really matter because it wasn't an important part of the power station. The fact that the bit that blew up contained the swimming pools for the spent plutonium seemed to slip their minds. They just panicked and botched attempts to cool the generators. As they repeatedly tripped over themselves the situation got worse. What they were thinking of when they started flooding the cores with sea water I can't imagine. Then the laughable attempt of flying helicopters over the nuclear power plant dropping buckets of water on them from the air. Was that simply a publicity stunt because there is no way you can expect to prevent a nuclear meltdown of 100 tons of plutonium with a few buckets of water. And what on earth did they think was happening to the water? It was either going into the atmosphere as contaminated steam or it was sloshing all around the ground. Now they have a leak (not surprising really) with all their botched attempts to fix the problem. (I bet it isn't the only leak either.) So what do they do next? They pour concrete into the area where they think the leak is. What? Ridiculous. What happens if it doesn't work? There is a more severe problem and sure enough it didn't work. Not to worry though because their comedians have got another plan... Papier-mâché with a polymer base (glue!). So they tore up a load of newspaper and added some sawdust for good measure and poured that into the hole with the cement. Strangely that didn't work but let's give them a round of applause for entertainment, originality and effort. Now they have come up with an idea to wrap a giant sheet around the plant to hold the radioactivity at bay! They'll be suggesting sending it to Monsignor Muamamamamar Gaddafi as a joke soon.

In the swimming pools above the six reactors at Fukushima are about three and a half thousand tons - yes - 3,400 tons of spent fuel rods. These fuel rods contain a cocktail of highly toxic radioactive material including plutonium, uranium, caesium and iodine. The nuclear fuel inside the reactors which were producing the power amounts to about 877 tons. A total of about 4,277 tons of highly radioactive material. Caesium has a half life of about 30 years. This means that it loses half of its radioactivity every 30 years. Therefore it is significantly radioactive for hundreds of years. You can forget about the plutonium and the uranium they have half lives of 25,000 years and 700,000,000 years respectively.

But they think they can solve the problem with papier-mâché and a giant cloth bag! Well I have an idea and I would like to present it to the folk up at Fukushima. I heard of this remedy many years ago and I think it would stand a good chance of working. Vinegar and brown paper! You never know vinegar might absorb radiation. At least they could try telling people it does.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

What a funny old world we live in. If some bloke went around demanding that no one say "nib-nob" and exclaimed that if anyone dare say nib-nob he would beat the hell out of them then you could take one of two positions. You could just diplomatically avoid saying nib-nob so that you could get on quietly with your own life without this lunatic attacking you or you could say nib-nob-nib-nob nib-nob in an attempt to rile him and ask what he was going to do about it. You would likely get struck. I wonder what that is all about. It seems that the guy has arbitrarily chosen a rule and demanded that everyone else follow his rule and then he uses threats to harm people to control them. This sounds like a very insecure chap who was probably made to feel insignificant and powerless as a small boy. To assert his validity he needs to control other people. Now if I had a friend who asked me not to say nib-nob because it offended him I would probably avoid saying nib-nob out of respect. But would he remain a friend for long if he kept asserting that I mustn't say nib-nob or he would beat me up? I don't think I would waste much time with a bloke like that. It would seem to me that he was not content to deal with his own problems but rather feels the need to control other people to validate his own existence. If I believed in a God then I would suggest that God, being all powerful, created humans as separate entities such that they dealt with their own responsibilities according to God's edict. If I am responsible for myself then I should not be the bad guy beating up other people who are not good guys. Surely the trick is to be a good guy. If nib-nob is something God says I should not say then it is up to me not to say it. Ordering others around when they have equally arbitrary notions of their own is simple a device of competition to see who's nib-nob will rule the day. It reminds me of the school bully asking if you like his girlfriend. If you do you get beaten up because he owns her and if you don't you get beaten up for not appreciating her.

I think if Terry Jones bought a published copy of a book which was on sale for him to buy so that the profits (not the prophets) went to the publisher then it is up to Terry whether he reads it, uses it as a prop for his table or burns it. If he takes someone else's book and burns it he should be made to replace it. But that is not what this burning of the Quran is about. It is all symbolic. Muslims have decided to invest meaning in material objects and hold the rest of the world to ransom declaring these material creations sacred in some way. Then they justify draconian and punitive action against anyone who dares to not agree with them. Worse still, in this case, because killing other people half way round the world will do just as well to frighten Terry or anyone else who might agree with him. It is all beginning to look like the Christian Inquisition.

It is ironic that the revolutions in the Middle East are against dictatorial oppressive threatening control freaks. Are the Egyptians really going to vote in the Muslim Brotherhood? Are the populations so deprived of information and the ability to think for themselves that they are going to swap one dictatorial oppressive regime for another. Any religion which does not tolerate dissent is not acceptable to humanity. It is rather a subversive, insidious, perverse mechanism of control. Interesting that Islam is quite happy to accept Jesus as a prophet and his "message" from God was one of peace. I have not read the Quran but I am led to believe that Islam is meant to be a peace loving religion. Is the proposition that it is a peace loving religion a little like the Christian claim? Is it just a moralistic pronouncement to hide the malicious hierarchical machinations of the deceptive power mongers who hold the religion up to justify their pompous, self important rule.

There is an insight into what this is all about. If you intimidate children and control them to agree with the way you think then in most cases they will think that way in order to survive. Having perverted their freedom they are disadvantaged when it comes to thinking for themselves later on. Enforcing a religion on children is directly contrary to all the "goodness" embodied in the pretentious teachings. Pretentious because it is a pretence to tell someone that peace and non-violence is the correct way and you will beat the hell out of them if they don't agree. Threatening to ostracise children or to abandon them or to beat them are all survival threats. Adults who do that to children are behaving very badly. Except that most of them don't know what they are doing because they have been intimidated and frightened themselves in childhood they are performing probably one of the worst possible acts known to humanity. Namely perverting and corrupting the God given freedom of children.

We don't like Nazis and we don't like fascists and we don't like dictatorial regimes which isolate and intimidate their subjects. That is all about the aggrandizement of the leaders. People who attack and kill other people because they are upset should look into their own hearts and figure out what is really hurting them because it is not some goofy pastor in Florida. What is hurting them is that they have complied with the mechanisms of oppression in their own culture and they are profoundly ashamed of what they have done to themselves in the acceptance of their subjugation to their cruel leaders. They should attempt to be brave enough to stand up to their oppressors and in the case of the objection to the burning of the Quran the odds are their oppressors are the Muslim hierarchy. I say this because I know this dynamic from my upbringing as a Christian tree.

A note for anyone wanting to condemn me for saying nib-nob. I didn't say it I was just reporting a fictitious character who said it or might have said it. I'm only a tree so burn the fiction and get on with reality.